Monday, December 30, 2013

Last Christmas Stitches for 2013 and a Sampler Start!

Hello stitching and blogging friends - I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! Here are my last Christmas stitches for 2013, these beautiful postcard style pieces were featured in a World of Cross Stitching Magazine. I did not manage to do the finishing in time for Christmas as they turned out to be very time consuming to stitch, with lots of quarter stitches and back stitching.

They are stitched on 28ct antique white Jubilee in DMC stranded cotton.

Look at the lovely detail on these cards - I certainly have to do the finishing so that they can be proudly displayed next Christmas :)

I also have (another) new start - I decided not to wait for the new year to start this piece! It is called Celebration Sampler and is featured in the Just Cross Stitch Magazine as part of their 30th anniversary this year - it is a six part sampler and runs over a few issues. I'm stitching it on antique white 27ct Linda in DMC threads.

It does not look like much now, but it will be a beautiful band sampler with some specialty stitches. I am really enjoying this project so far, even if I still have to chart my name into the blank space between the bands - my name and surname just won't fit into the allotted space - the sampler is quite narrow!

We have been 'enjoying' a typical hot, sunny South African summer, which means my roses are in full bloom. I would like to end my last post of 2013 with some photos of one of my favourite roses from my garden. It is called 'Blue Bayou' and has the most beautiful silver lilac flowers.

24 comments:

Stunning postcards Michelle - they look wonderful. Beautiful roses. We are going to miss the African sun this February for sure. I have been browsing the gifted magazine to me and have found 3 lovely Samplers - after New Year I will e-mail and maybe we can find one amongst them we can stitch as a SAL - Happy New Year to you all xx

Oh Michelle, how beautiful these postcards are. I can easily imagine that they took some time to stitch up. Quarter stitches and back stitches are sometimes really time consuming. But the result was worth it.

I have seen the band sampler in the different JCS issues, it's really a great project. Enjoy stitching it.

Your roses are wonderful and I'm already looking forward to our first roses in the garden - but I have to wait for quite a while as winter has just started, lol.